An interesting part of producing Pot Melt and fused glass is the art that can be found close photographs. The sweeps of color cannot be duplicated with a brush and ,for the most part cannot be manipulated unless you reach into a 1700 degree kiln to rake the molten glass.

These images were produced in January and February 2014

Pot Melt detail from a disk that will be sectioned for jewelry item.

Look for the center most far away star. This is from a Pot Melt disk

This is a Pot Melt detail Green eruption

This is a closer look at Lily with enhanced color

I have included the round edges of the Pot Melt disk in order to get red anther along the top of the lily

This is the inverted image of the Green eruption.Pot Melt detail eruption II

I have been working on some Stone Sculpture for a few weeks. This month I am showing recent Potmelt work. See below for four pendants and four lapel pins. Prices are posted on Pinterest at http://pinterest.com/ggust2/glass-puddles/

Fused Glass

Fusing glass is somewhat like Stain glass but instead of using Lead Strips, or “Came”. To put the pieces of glass together, you melt them in a kiln at about 1400 degrees. I use a Skutt Firebox FireBox8

The glass is either sheet glass, rods, and frit. Here are some examples.

The longer pieces of fused glass can be used as pendants, or window or tree decorations

On the left is an abstract with sheet and rod glass.

The images below demonstrate that rods can be bent before adding them to the design.

Pot-melt is also called Aperture-melt. When first starting, I used a flower pot that is available at any nursery, the kind with the hole in the bottom. I found that the pot was usually to tall for my small kiln, so I bought only the flower pot tray that goes under the flower pot, and drilled my own hole. Then, in order to get more intricate results I drilled two or three holes. Each hole is an aperture. Then I began to skip the pot and use a steel wire mesh or grid.

Unfired glass is placed on the wire grid and is set into the kiln which will achieve a temperature of about 1700 degrees. The melted glass flows through the grid and onto the kiln shelf below. The glass cools and the cutting and grinding follow.

There is a definite down side to using steel. As the steel cools it will let off little particles of black carbon soot that can spoil a perfectly good piece of glass. The remedy is to remove the mesh before it starts cooling. That means that you have to protect your hands with heavy, heat resistant gloves.

At the point of retrieving the mesh a pair of really long tongs are required. At 1700 degrees or more, Act quickly and get your hand out of the glove as soon as you have parked the mesh on a fire proof stand.

Colorful as it may be, this piece is unusable for jewelry.

Here you can see the result of a melt where I didn’t sufficiently clean the aperture cup. There are long strings of soot throughout.

Below are two examples of what I consider clean settings.

Glass Enamel and silver filings

I used Bronze as the main body, attached the Potmelt glass, added the Enameled chip. The crystal is amethyst.

In a silver bezel, I used sheet glass, glass stringers, powdered enamel in blue and silver filings. If you are consulting warm glass and fusing books, these filings are under the “inclusions” section.